Stairway To Heaven by Richard Cole Page A

would excitedly ask the others. “What can we play next?”
    After they had performed the entire Zeppelin repertoire—some of them more than once—they moved on to “Good Golly, Miss Molly”…“Long Tall Sally”…old Elvis standards…Chuck Berry songs…anything that all of them could improvise.
    Once the last note had reverberated off the walls and finally faded away, and the crowd had caught its breath and began to disperse, John Paul heaved a sigh. “It was a spectacular night, wasn’t it?”
    On the way back to the hotel, as Bonzo toweled off his face and howled with joy, he screamed, “The show hit them like a thunderstorm.” That night at the Boston Tea Party, it really was a torrential downpour.

10
LIFE ON THE ROAD
    D espite the early success that Led Zeppelin enjoyed, there was nothing very glamorous about their first American tour.
    As well as providing physical security for the band and making sure that their equipment was set to go at every venue, I had the responsibility of taking charge of all the flight and hotel arrangements—and not much of it was first-class. We flew coach in commercial planes and pinched pennies on air fares by milking TWA’s “Discover America” plan, which allowed us to buy airline tickets that routed us through the U.S., saving us 50 percent on every connection. It cut our travel expenses by thousands of dollars. In most cities, we stayed at Holiday Inns or other reasonably priced hotels. At the airports, there weren’t limousines waiting for us, but rented cars, usually Ford LTDs from Hertz or Avis. But since none of us had credit cards, renting a car was usually a challenge.
    At the airport counter in San Francisco, the clerk simply refused my request for a car. “It’s a company policy,” she said matter-of-factly. “No credit card, no rental car.”
    We argued for ten minutes. I explained that we had been able to rent them elsewhere. I offered her free tickets to a Zeppelin performance. Nothing worked. Finally, I lost my cool. I pulled $6,000 in cash out of my pocket, threw it on the counter, and shouted, “I’ll buy the goddamn car! Just give me the fucking keys! Now!”
    She backed away trembling, hurriedly filled out the paperwork, and pushed the keys toward me. “You guys are crazy!” she said, choking back tears. Maybe so, but we finally had a car.
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    The band members would drive with me in the LTD, with personal luggage squeezed into the trunk. Kenny Pickett would steer the three-ton, U-Haul truck with our equipment, including Pagey’s 1958 Fender Telecaster, bass gear, Vox AC-30 amps, a kit of Ludwig drums for Bonzo, and some back-up items. They played so hard on them during the American tour that by the time we headed home, most of the equipment was wrecked.
    One harrowing ride from Spokane to Seattle almost put an early end to that tour—and to Led Zeppelin—just a few days after the band had arrived in the States. We had just finished a performance at the Gonzaga Gym in Spokane and were about to depart for the Spokane airport for a flight that would eventually take us to Los Angeles. But an Arctic blizzard had moved into the region and was increasing in intensity. Our flight—and every other flight—out of Spokane was canceled.
    We were stranded and cold. The state of Washington is beautiful, but being stuck there in Siberia-like weather, including eight inches of snow, is not how we had planned to spend New Year’s Day, particularly since the band had a gig scheduled at the Whisky a Go Go in L.A. on January 2.
    â€œGet us out of this fucking deep freeze!” Robert shouted at me. “Charter us a plane if you have to!”
    â€œCharter you a plane?!” I screamed back. “And who’s gonna pay for it? Should we take it out of your damn wages?”
    After a couple of frenetic phone calls, I found out that we